[Click here
for a chart showing how much money federal science-funding agencies
might receive in fiscal year 2002, compared to fiscal year 2001.]

Federal science programs fared well in the fiscal year 2001 budget process
that wrapped up last November. President Clinton asked for big increases,
and the Republican Congress met or exceeded the president’s request in
many cases. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and NOAA received double-digit
increases, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) shook off years of budgetary
stagnation to post an 8-percent gain. Politicians in both parties repeated
the science community’s mantra that technology underpinned by science was
a driving force of the nation’s economic boom and that a balanced investment
in both the biomedical and physical sciences was the key to future advances.
Bipartisan coalitions of senators called for doubling scientific research
funding at NSF, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department
of Energy (DOE), the Department of Defense (DOD) and across the board for
all science programs.

The Bush administration’s fiscal 2002 budget request brought many of
those agencies back down to Earth. Research and development, or R&D,
at NIH and DOD fared well, but the president’s requests for civilian, non-biomedical
R&D programs were flat or declining. Is science a target? Not particularly.
But the cuts to federal science programs are more than collateral damage.
The administration unveiled its proposed fiscal 2002 budget in early
April. Five dominant factors set funding levels:

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) focused its fiscal
2002 budget priorities on fulfilling campaign pledges.

The president’s request limits the growth in federal spending to 4 percent.
As a result, the increases for campaign priorities must be offset by cuts
elsewhere.

The most popular targets for cuts were any funding added by Congress in
fiscal 2001 (“earmarks”) and any programs closely associated with the last
administration.

The budget reflects the new administration’s views on the role and utility
of science programs. Although the first three factors have a stronger budgetary
impact, the administration’s philosophy on science will have longer-lasting
consequences. It will remain even after the initial campaign promises have
been paid off.

The budget was prepared by a skeleton crew with most of the administration’s
leadership not yet in place. Next year’s budget request will most likely
be a more accurate representation of the Bush administration’s future course.

Paying for promises

This budget is a campaign budget, pure and simple. The president had
campaigned not only for a $1.6 trillion tax cut, but also for increased
spending on defense, education and biomedical research. Making these increases
within the 4-percent growth cap meant other federal programs had to absorb
$1 billion in cuts. Since the president does not control the annual spending
for entitlement programs like Medicare or the interest on the national
debt, those cuts had to come out of non-defense discretionary spending
set through the annual appropriations process. And that is right where
science programs get their money.

During the campaign, then-Gov. Bush pledged to double funding for the
National Institutes of Health. He made no such pledge for other science
programs. Indeed, readers of this column may be shocked (shocked!) to discover
that non-biomedical science was not a major campaign issue for either party.
In this light, agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and
NASA did well to receive slight increases at or below the rate of inflation.
But the flat funding meant that new projects, such as the NSF Earthscope
initiative, did not make it into the request (see Geotimes, March 2000).

In the case of the Interior Department, Bush’s campaign pledges were
to fund the maintenance backlog for national parks, improve Native American
schools, and redirect federal oil and gas royalties to state conservation
programs. Because the department received a 3.4-percent decrease, non-priority
programs had to make up the difference, none more than the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS). Although OMB initially sought a 22-percent cut, intervention
by Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and a strong response from USGS
supporters brought the cut down to 9 percent. The final request essentially
eliminated all the gains made in fiscal 2001, pushing the survey back two
years.

The campaign driver would not matter so much were it not for the 4-percent
spending cap. In an earlier column (Geotimes, April 2001), Margaret
Baker examined the recent funding history of geoscience-related programs,
showing that the president could provide significant investment in geoscience
agencies before even coming close to his proposed limit.

Another driver is nothing new: the annual tug-of-war between the branches
of government over who determines funding levels, combined with the repudiation
of a previous administration’s policies. Most of the R&D decreases
for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture
budgets remove congressional earmarks. The president’s budget calls for
eliminating the Advanced Technology Program at the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (part of the Department of Commerce), a major
component of the Clinton Administration’s technology policy. Another example
is eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Project
Impact program, which was closely associated with Clinton’s FEMA director,
James Lee Witt.

Changing philosophy

If the budget priorities necessitated the overall cut, specific cuts
reflect a narrower view of the USGS mission. According to Interior budget
documents, the president’s request for the survey “proposes to focus resources
on high priority programs, including meeting the science needs of the Department
and land management programs, and to reduce funding for programs that primarily
benefit external customers.”

Providing scientific support for land management is certainly a key
component of the USGS mission, but that focus overlooks a broader national
mission that extends well beyond the boundaries of our public lands. The
survey’s role in monitoring and assessing natural hazards, resources and
environmental conditions extends across the entire country, to all the
places where people (voters!) live and work.

Water-quality programs were particularly hard hit. The National Water
Quality Assessment (NAWQA) program would be reduced by a third, and the
Toxic Substances Hydrology program would be defunded entirely. The data
collected by these programs are used heavily by EPA and its state counterparts,
leading the administration to suggest that those users should also pay
for these programs. While this motivation is understandable, it would quickly
lead to a patchwork approach to data collection, a problem that has always
plagued the streamgaging program. Moreover, it would turn the USGS into
an EPA contractor, thus compromising the survey’s independence. This approach
could also drive the USGS into greater competition with the private sector,
where hackles are already raised.

In the case of energy supply research at DOE, oil and natural gas programs
would see a reduction of over 50 percent as fossil energy research moves
toward clean coal technology and away from industry partnerships. An article
by Scott Tinker and Eugene Kim in this issue of Geotimes explains why oil
and gas research is not corporate welfare but is filling a much-needed
role in ensuring our future energy supplies.

Two fronts

Given that cuts to science programs are primarily an artifact of larger
budgetary constraints, how do we respond? In the coming months, we need
a concerted effort by geoscientists to explain to Congress why geoscience
programs deserve support. The administration is not likely to resist if
Congress restores funding for the USGS and provides a sizeable increase
for NSF. We just need to convince them to do it.

At the same time, it is not too early to start looking toward the fiscal
2003 budget request. This next request will be the first prepared by a
fully staffed Bush administration. As new presidential appointees come
on board, it is imperative that they hear from the geoscience community
on the importance of federal investment in the geosciences and on the national
role that geoscience agencies such as the USGS play.

For more about the president's fiscal year 2002 budget request, visit
the link on
the American Geological Institute's Government Affiars page.

Applegate directs the American Geological
Institute’s Government Affairs Program and is editor of Geotimes.E-mail: applegate@agiweb.org